Documented Reports

The Vlasenica vampire incident is mentioned in a couple of local records and was thus picked up in the feverish decades of “vampire craze” that followed the publishing of “Dracula”. Vlasenica is a town in the Serbian part of Bosnia Herzegovina, situated somewhere between Sarajevo and Zvornik.
A young man died in 1906.
Shortly after, his wife got ill as well. She insisted that her dead husband had visited her during the night to drink her blood.
He had become a Lampir (obv. it is the regional word for Vampire) so the terrified neighbors asked permission to dig up the dead man in order to decapitate and cremate him.
Their request was turned down by the authorities and the panic continued in the village. The vampire of Vlasenica made a total of 15 victims before he was eventually dug up and dispensed with in the usual / ritualistic way.

Deviant burial was a common practice in medieval times and with the expansion of archaeological sites all across the world, we have more and more evidence of deviant burials as means to prevent vampires from leaving their graves and terrorizing villages – in this case, one located in Dorchester!
Back in 2007, research by Wessex Archaeology in Little Keep, Dorchester, revealed the remnants of a roman cemetery. Out of the total of 29 graves found, 5 had evidence of deviant burial.

Deviant burial in Dorchester

While some corpses had been entered face-down, others had been decapitated – with their head placed between their legs at the ankles. In some of the other graves the legs themselves were crossed, however this can be a normal result of the decomposition process and not of a deviant burial.
As per the coins found in the one of the graves, the deviant burial can be placed in the region of 4th century AD and it is possible that the coins were added in an effort to “help” the souls of the departed on their way – I`m referring here to the pagan belief that one would need to pay the ferryman on the river Strix for passage to the afterlife.

Since no reports are available for Dorchester as to any vampire activity in that time, I`m afraid that the deviant burial is all we have to go on, however it`s safe to say that the villagers were convinced that this drastic action had to be taken in order to prevent unwanted nightly visits.

When one thinks about documented vampires it`s almost always Transylvania that comes to mind, however Europe is riddled with examples of villages that were terrorized by tales of the dead coming to pray on the living – was a regular occurrence in medieval communities.
Let`s take Croatia for example – their first recorded incident dates back from 1656, when a man by the same of [Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando] is said to have haunted a village in his native region of Istria.
What I find very interesting about this account is the fact that the vampire was not eradicated until 1672 so he apparently had a full 16 years reign!

Now, if legends are to be believed, the reanimated man would go for a walk around the village and knock on random doors – death would visit that house within the week. Must have had a lot of victims…
ure also appeared to his terrified widow in her bedroom, who described the corpse as looking as though he was smiling and gasping for breath, and would then sexually assault her.
When Father Giorgio eventually came face to face with the vampire, he held out a cross in front of him and yelled “Behold Jesus Christ, you vampire! Stop tormenting us!”

Another notable detail is the fact that the villagers were not successful in getting rid of the vampire the first time they tried, as apparently the stake “bounced off” the chest of the corpse. The second time they tried by decapitation, after a series of exorcism prayers were said – and according to folklore, peace finally returned to the land.

George Hodgson died in Dent [Yorkshire] in 1715, aged ninety-four.
So far nothing out of the ordinary…
But local rumors had it that his remarkable longevity was due to him selling his soul to the Devil; and that George enjoyed a daily glass of sheep’s blood as a tonic.
A farmer declared that he had once spotted a black hare – unquestionably a witch’s familiar – had understandably blasted at it with his gun, injured it and followed the creature’s bloody trail to George’s house, where he peered through a window and saw George bandaging a shot gun wound.

It wasn`t long after his burial [in a remote corner of the churchyard of the parish church, St Andrew’s], that people began to see George walking around the village at night. Some texts will add to this that the “victims” all died.
To prevent further deaths his body was exhumed. When the coffin was opened, it was found that his hair and nails had grown and the flesh was glowing pink as though the corpse were alive. The body was reburied next to the church porch, with a stake through its heart for good measure.

Historical accounts report that in 1822, in the region of Southwell, one Henry Standley was found guilty of the murder of a hawker named John Dale. Arrested, he was later found dead in his cell.
A local newspaper report dated Feb. 15, 1822 reveals that Standley was buried near the crossroads and a stake was driven through his body, suggesting that fear of the dead rising from the grave did exist in British society in the 1820s.
Burial at crossroads is quite common for suspected vampires, the theory being if they were to reanimate they would not know the way back to the village. And within folklore, suicides are at great risk of becoming vampires in death because of the influence exercised by the church.